Sectoral Productivity Growth, COVID-19 Shocks, and Infrastructure

Hildegart Ahumada (), Eduardo Cavallo, Santos Espina-Mairal and Fernando Navajas
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Santos Espina Mairal

No 11404, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: This paper examines sectoral productivity shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, their aggregate impact, and the possible compensatory effects of improving productivity in infrastructure-related sectors. We employ the KLEMS annual dataset for a group of OECD and Latin America and the Caribbean countries, complemented with high-frequency data for 2020. First, we estimate a panel vector autoregression of growth rates in sector level labor productivity to specify the nature and size of sectoral shocks using the historical data. We then run impulse-response simulations of one standard deviation shocks in the sectors that were most affected by COVID 19. We estimate that the pandemic cut economy-wide labor productivity by 4.9 percent in Latin America, and by 3.5 percent for the entire sample. Finally, by modeling the long-run relationship between productivity shocks in the sectors most affected by COVID 19, we find that large productivity improvements in infrastructure--equivalent to at least three times the historical rates of productivity gains--may be needed to fully compensate for the negative productivity losses traceable to COVID 19.

Keywords: Infrastructure; Productivity; COVID-19; COVID-19; COVID-19; COVID-19; COVID-19; Sector shocks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C51 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff
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Journal Article: Sectoral Productivity Growth, COVID-19 Shocks, and Infrastructure (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:idb:brikps:11404

DOI: 10.18235/0003411

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